Truck for Sale
by carguysteve549
Summary: This story began as an unused chapter of one of my other stories. It is now a short story of one chapter set around Amy's return from Europe, all of her plans apparently ruined, and as she sees all of her dreams slipping away she needs to come up with a solution to her problems or risk losing the future that only a few months ago was everything she had ever wanted for her life.


Truck for Sale

Tim Fleming drove his old dually truck into a slot between the vehicles parked in front of the rustic house at Heartland Ranch. He strode through the front door just in time to catch the last of breakfast with his daughters, Lou and Amy, and Jack Bartlett, his wary friend and once father and in law. "Jack! I need a favor!" he announced. "I have been looking on the internet for a truck to replace the ol' Ford and I need you to come with me and look at a beaut I found over in Okotoks. It sounds like a _steal_ , Jack, so we need to get moving!"

"What makes you think I don't already have more work to do today than I can get done?" He looked the pitiful breakfast crasher over and decided he would be rid of him quicker just to comply with his request, and, he thought, he could use a distraction from all the hard work he had been doing with his cattle the past week, and from the ongoing tension in the air put forth by the majority female population of the ranch. "Can you at least wait a minute until I finish my toast and coffee?" Jack replied.

"Why don't you just bring it with you, eat it on the way, because I wanna get there early to make sure nobody beats me out of that truck!"

"And good morning to you, too!" Lou sarcastically greeted her neglecting father.

"Oh, sorry girls, uh…, good morning…..I'm just in a bit of a hurry, that's all!"

"So it seems!" quipped Amy, the younger of Tim's daughters.

"Oh, by the way, Amy, I see that you finally knocked some sense into that fiancé of yours. While I was online looking for my truck I happened to notice an old vintage truck for sale, a blue '57 GMC. It just about had to be his old truck….how many can there be left out there still running? I thought he was going to drive that piece of junk until it died!"

Amy stopped the slice of toast she was about to take a bite from mid-way to her mouth and put it back on the plate in front of her, a furrow gathering at her brow as she stood from the table, and glowered at her clueless father while hurrying to the mud room to sit on the bench and reach for her boots. When she shoved through the screen door and scurried outside without acknowledging his question, Tim looked to Jack and his remaining daughter, hands up and mouth gaping in a jolt, "What was _that_ about?"

"Well, Dad, for someone who lives just down the road from us, you don't keep up very well with your family and the things they have going on in their lives, do you?"

"What? What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that Amy and Ty haven't spoken since the day she got back from her trip to Europe, is what it means. She has been beside herself. Ty went to Hillhurst Stables to meet her there when she and Ahmed arrived back from their trip," Lou was explaining, until Jack couldn't contain himself and butted in, "And apparently, the Prince said something which didn't set right with Ty, so Ty knocked him on his ass right there on the spot!"

Lou cut back in, "And you can imagine how well that went over with Ahmed's security people….they tackled Ty and were going to have him arrested until Amy talked Ahmed out of pressing charges."

Tim scrunched his face into his palms and said, "She can't have him treating the Prince like that! She is going to lose the best job she's ever had over that idiot! So, what's it been, a week since she got back? They still haven't talked about it?"

"Ten days, _ten days_ since she's been home, and no, they haven't talked, and it's not looking like either one of them is ready to give in and be the one to make the first move to try and settle anything," Lou explained. "Things got a little tense with them before she left for Europe…, well, maybe in part _because_ she left for Europe, and although I don't know the whole story yet, Ty stopped by the house to see me just before he went to Hillhurst to pick Amy up the morning she and Ahmed got back, and he told me that Amy and the Prince had some explaining to do. Apparently, things went from bad to worse when he got there!"

"What's that mean, _explaining_ to do?" Tim asked.

"Well, after Ty had left, I asked Georgie if she knew what he could have meant by that, and she proceeded to show me a video of a party at the Prince's mansion the weekend before Amy came back home, and…., the video showed Ahmed kissing Amy.…, and it looked like she reciprocated willingly. Georgie also showed me some foreign gossip newspaper photos making the impression that they were the 'New Royal Couple!"

The dumbfounded duo sat back in their seats at the news, shocked to hear that their Amy would behave like that for _any_ reason, especially considering the way they knew she felt about Ty. Jack brushed it off as unbelievable, "Lou, I know Amy hasn't been herself since she got back from her trip, but I'm sure there is a good explanation! It just isn't like her to do something like that! Have you asked her about it yet?"

"Yes, Grandpa, the day after she got back home! But she won't talk to me about it, not yet anyways, other than saying that you can't believe everything you see on the internet!" Lou lamented. "You know how that must have affected Ty! I could see it in his eyes when he was saying those things, but he wouldn't tell me any more than that. He just left, and that's the last any of us have seen of him. He won't answer any of our calls, isn't returning our messages, and he isn't at the trailer. I think he's moved out!" Lou sighed heavily before the next disclosure, "I was going to tell Amy after breakfast, but Scott called me early this morning and told me Ty had turned in his notice yesterday afternoon! He said that he is moving to Vancouver as soon as he graduates to take a job in a big clinic out there! Scott said he made him agree to wait for one more week before he made it official, to give Ty a chance to think about it a little more before he committed to moving away, but he said that it doesn't look good and he thinks Ty has made up his mind already. And, yes, the truck for sale in the ad is Ty's. I just checked the number, and it is his!

Tim's face twisted into a sly grin, suddenly imagining what it would be like to have royal blood in the family, "Maybe it's just meant to be, you know? Maybe this isn't such a bad thing…, I mean…, think about it! That guy is loaded, and if…,"

Jack grabbed the daydreaming schemer by the sleeve of his coat to get him out of reach from his fuming daughter whose face had suddenly gone pink with rage at the self-serving attitude of her father's remarks and threatened to lunge at him at any instant.

* * *

Amy busied herself in the barn by turning all of the horses out into the nearest pasture and finishing with mucking their stalls, her version of cowgirl therapy. Tim walked through the large open door and leaned against the stall's top rail where his daughter worked, harder than necessary, he thought. "Look, Honey, I am sorry about that, I didn't know about you and Ty fighting. What happened?"

"I'd rather not talk about it, Dad," Amy grumbled. "It's just….all wrecked now! And it's not like you ever cared about my relationship with Ty anyway!" she said with a resentful stare.

In a rare moment of true concern for someone else's feelings, Tim said to his baby girl, "And it will stay wrecked until one of you gets over yourselves and offers to be the first one to talk, to reach out and let the other one know that you want to work things out."

"I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon, and I'm gonna take advice about my love life from someone with _your_ track record?" she shot back.

"Why not take it from someone who knows, Amy?" he countered. "What the hell is so bad that you can't even talk about it with the man you are supposed to be engaged to marry? And, just for the record, I know I've been tough on Ty, but I also want you to know that I don't dislike him like you all think I do, Amy. In fact, I admire his grit, the way he has made something out of himself, considering the bad draw he got as a kid, and he has proven to all of us that he loves you and is more than capable of taking care of you the way he should."

The cowgirl propped the rake against the wall and stepped toward her father, and finally, needing to open up to someone, began to explain, "Ty and I have not been getting along well for a while now. He wouldn't tell me so, but I knew he felt somehow betrayed when Ahmed offered the job to me to go to Europe for four months, and I took it without really talking to him like I should have. So, I guess we were mad at each other for the same selfish reasons, not including our partners in our big decisions."

"So, why _did_ you take the job then, if it was going to cause a serious problem with you two?"

It was partly because of the way he bought that horse, Charger, without even mentioning it to me! I started to feel like I couldn't trust him anymore if he was going to make decisions like that, important decisions…, with the money he needed for school and that we were going to use to make the down payment on that ranch!"

"Well, Honey, the deal with Charger didn't work out so bad, did it? I mean, when you two decided to work together and got that horse fixed, he turned out to be pretty amazing…, worth a lot of money after you won that race on him, I might add!"

"Yeah, I guess that worked out really well, but it could have just as easily gone the other way! Ty could have lost all of his money, then what would he have done about finishing school? Anyways, after I left, we talked every day at first, then every couple of days, then once a week, and for the last month, we barely talked at all. By the end of the trip, when I called, he would hardly speak to me. On top of all of that, while I was gone, the farm we were going to make an offer toward sold out from under us. I know he blames me for losing the chance to make the offer, although he denies that too."

"OK, that's just an argument, something you should be able to get over easy enough, if you make an effort and work at it a little," said her dad, "but if I can ask, what caused Ty to get so upset that he smacked the Prince?"

Amy thought for a few seconds before including her sometimes less than compassionate father in any more private details, but the need to get some of the pressure off her chest overcame her hesitancy, "When we landed at Hillhurst, Ahmed and I, Ty was there waiting for us. He walked out to us when we were getting off the helicopter and just as I was going to meet him, Ahmed grabbed me by the arm and told me something that I wish Ty had _not_ overheard, because he got the wrong idea about it and he got really upset.

"Look, I know Ty can be a little bit of a hothead sometimes, but it must have been something pretty bad to cause him to react that way, I would think?" Tim suggested, looking for the rest of the story.

Amy sighed and decided to let it all go, "Before we landed, Ahmed proposed a plan to have me come back to Europe for extended periods to work with the royal jumping team during the off season. It was going to be a _huge_ salary for me, but I had turned him down, for obvious reasons." she confessed. "Just as Ty got within ear shot of us, after we got off the helicopter, Ahmed grabbed my arm and said "Remember, Amy, you have much more potential than you will ever realize while you are tied down here in Alberta, you need to cut your losses here and move ahead with your life."

"Oh, that's just great! What could Ty have _possibly_ taken offense to over that?"

"That's when Ty told Ahmed that he didn't care if he _was_ royalty, that he had no right to make a move on his fiancée, to butt out of our lives, and that _we_ would be the ones deciding our future, not him. Then, Ahmed said to Ty, ' _I would expect thinking like this from a stable hand_. _This kind of thinking will lead you nowhere and do nothing but keep Amy from the life she deserves!'_ And that was all it took….Ty decked him! Of course, the security guards pounced on Ty and pinned him to the ground and handcuffed him. I had to do some fancy talking to keep them from calling the cops, which would _not_ have been a good thing for Ty and his upcoming graduation. They eventually let him go, escorted him off the property, and told him to never set foot there at the stables again."

"OK, I have to ask, Amy, _did_ Ty have anything to worry about? Is there something you haven't told him? Lou told me about some video with you and Ahmed…, what do you think that looked like to him? Do you really blame him for doing what he did? I think he has shown a lot of patience with you and that job. In fact, I told him the day you left, as you were climbing aboard that helicopter, that I thought he was crazy for letting you go. I couldn't have done it, let you go away with a guy like that, _for four months_ , under _any_ circumstances!" Her father put his firm grip on her shoulder and looked at her with a hint of pity in his eyes. "You have got to get this handled, somehow, and soon! Let me know if I can help, anything you need…, _an-y-thing_! OK?"

"Thanks, Dad! It means a lot to hear you say those things." she replied softly, giving him an appreciative nod as he turned toward his truck.

As soon as Tim disappeared through the door, Jack stepped inside the barn and walked up to her and said, "Amy, I don't have to go with him to look at that stupid truck right now, if you need me for anything, just say the word."

"No, Grandpa, I am the only one who can fix this mess and I need to stay out here and think about how I am going to try to do just that!"

If anything, Amy felt even worse after her talk with her father. Now she knew others felt she took a big chance on her relationship with Ty and it appeared to have been too much for them to handle. She thought of what her dad said at the kitchen table, about the old truck for sale. _'It couldn't be Ty's GMC! There is too much history between us and that truck to ever let it go like that.'_

* * *

Ty clattered through a shelf of old things left in the garage beside the house he had rented three days ago, looking for a bucket and garden hose that the landlord said should be stored there. After he found them, he hooked the hose to an outside spigot and filled the bucket with the soap he bought to give his treasured old truck one last cleaning.

He almost hated to be around the truck these days, the memories it carried must have weighed far beyond the intended payload it was designed to carry. There was no part of the 58 year old hunk of tin that didn't have Amy tied to it in some way, her holding a light for him when he was working underneath it, still trying to make it roadworthy enough to trust it not breaking down every time he left the ranch for an errand, or fixing the heater so she would stop complaining about it being too cold to ride in during the winter months, or her grinding the gears while he taught the fifteen year old free-spirited cowgirl how to drive. Their first date was made possible through the freedom the truck offered to a couple of kids trying to find their way to the next step of a budding relationship, taking them places that only they shared, probably the best times he would ever know. He had made up his mind. The only way he was ever going to overcome his recent losses here in Hudson would be to leave behind everything that tied him to his memories of the foothills of Alberta, and everyone who would always live in this little town.

Thoughts spun around inside Ty's head like an old jukebox reeling around until it hit on a selection and replayed it in full detail, then spinning again until the next one clicked into place. It had been a while, but he had done it before, pulling up stakes and leaving everything he knew behind, only this time the people and places he would be leaving were not hated or blamed for making him a bad person, just the opposite, in fact. He appreciated that his life was nothing like the one he had as a cast-off child who was passed around between foster homes that never allowed him to settle in, or that he never allowed himself to be settled into. As a result of his coming to Hudson he had learned what it felt like to receive a little respect from people he knew and to be loved and cared for by so many who called this place home, and he knew he was a completely different person because he had met them.

When he had finished the thorough cleaning of his mechanical companion he felt strangely sapped of energy, as if he had pulled an all-night session studying for an important exam, and went inside to lie on the sofa and take a nap.

* * *

After she had spent an hour with each of her two clients' horses and a few odd chores around the barn were finished, Amy decided to go into the office and call the clinic to see if she could find Ty at work.

"Hudson Veterinary Clinic, this is Cassandra speaking. How can I help you?"

"Hey, Cassandra, this is Amy. Could I please speak with Ty?"

"You could if he were here," the assistant quipped, and then hesitated. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?" the confused cowgirl asked.

"Ty turned in his two week notice yesterday! He told Scott that he is thinking about taking a job in Vancouver as soon as he graduates, since he messed everything here in Hudson up for good this time! Uh, those were his words, not mine."

Stunned by the assistants words, Amy pushed the end call button and got her lap top up and running to do a search for a '57 GMC truck. Sure enough, the ad popped up immediately with pictures and a brief description. The listed phone number was as familiar to her as her own. Her stomach tightened and her fingers were going numb from gripping the cell phone too tight. " _No way, he would never do that_! _How could he?_ "

"Do what, Amy?" her sister asked as she walked through the office door.

"Lou, look at this! He really _has_ put his truck up for sale! What is he thinking?"

Lou pulled up a chair in front of the desk and thought before she carefully answered, "He is thinking that everything he has been working for all of these years is broken to pieces. He is thinking that you are disappointed in him after his risky investment in 'Charger' and that you left him to work with some other guy ten thousand kilometers from home for four months, a guy that he doesn't trust with you any farther than he can pick him up and throw him, justified, I would say, and thinking about the fights over the phone while you were away, and losing out on that ranch you two were so determined to get, and now, the fight with Ahmed," she confided in her distressed little sister. "Amy, I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but if I didn't know you and believe your account of what happened after what was shown on that video, I would have my own ideas about what happened too! I think he believes you are looking beyond your life here in Hudson and that you are thinking of moving on without him, and that you meant it when you told him you would never forgive him for hitting Ahmed. Sis, are either of you going to get off your ass and fix this or are you both going to let your pigheadedness ruin the kind of relationship that most of the rest of us only wish we had?"

Shocked at the frank analysis, Amy wanted very much to lash out at her sister right then for being what she felt was less than supportive with her situation, but deep down she knew that Lou was right in what she had said. The riled up cowgirl stomped out of the office and stood in the middle of the barn, realizing that she needed to take a breath to cool off before she said or did something that she would regret, and noticed her horse poking his nose over his stall gate with hopeful expectation. "What are you looking at?" she asked of the animal, knowing he sensed she was upset and only wanted her to feel better about whatever was bothering her. "I'm sorry, buddy… I know you've missed me, and don't worry, it's gonna be OK! At least you don't seem to be judging me like everybody else is doing right now. C'mon boy! Let's you and me go for a ride!" She patted Spartan's nose and opened the stall gate to fetch him out into the isle, tied his lead to a loop in the wall, and reached for a handful of tack. She remembered how good it felt to have a friend like Spartan, suddenly feeling the anticipation of spending some quiet time with just the two of them out on a trail.

* * *

The rider and her black gelding made it almost all the way to the lazy river that bordered her grandfather's ranch to the south before she finally slowed her horse and let him walk the last few hundred feet to drink the fresh mountain water. Amy twisted in the saddle, the uncertainty of her future beginning to dominate her thoughts as she tried to cool off and think of what she should do and what she wanted from here on for her life. Only a short time ago everything had been completely planned out. Ty's graduation from vet school, getting her own business back up and running after her absence had left it dormant for months, and the excitement of her upcoming marriage to her best friend and love of her life was finally all becoming a reality, but after a few bad decisions and an unbelievable run of bad luck, all of it appeared to have slipped out of her grasp.

The pressure was building within her until she wished she could explode to release the energy. She sat in the tranquil surroundings and eventually began to realize that she never really looked at her job and the time away from home, and her suddenly taking the Prince up on his offer, from Ty's point of view. She knew he had taken it hard and finally admitted to herself that maybe he wasn't totally to blame for all of the ill will between them. Spartan raised his head and looked back toward his rider, letting her know that he was ready to move on. "OK, boy, let's get you back to the barn. I need to see about buying myself a truck!"

* * *

Amy drove into Hudson and stopped by her friend Sandra's dance studio and peeked through the door to see if she was busy with her students.

"Hey, Amy, it's so good to see you! Come on in, I've finished with my students for the day. Tell me, how have you been?"

Amy spent the next few minutes filling her friend in with details of the trip overseas and all of the chaos that had ensued upon her return. "I've made a mess of things, and now Ty is thinking of selling his truck and everything here in Hudson to move out to Vancouver! I can't let that happen, Sandra, not after everything we have been through together! I can't let him leave here thinking that I am disappointed in him or that I don't love him! That would be the biggest mistake of my life!"

"What are you going to do, Amy? If you aren't even talking…,"

Amy interrupted, "That's where you come in!" she said as she began to reveal her plan.

His phone vibrated on his chest, still asleep after spending an hour washing the old truck, and lit up with a local number he did not recognize, "Hello?" he answered.

"Yes…, I am calling to see if you still have that '57 GMC for sale?" the unfamiliar female voice asked.

"Yes, it is! So, are you interested in old trucks?" he asked, thinking it was unusual for a girl to be looking at something so old with less than the luxury of an automatic transmission or countless bells and whistles found on newer vehicles.

"Oh, I just read the ad for your truck. My grandfather had one on his farm when I was growing up just like the one you have!" she replied honestly. "It was blue, and your pictures reminded me of it so much! Can I come to look at it, like _now_?"

"Sure! Let me give you the directions and then you can see it as soon as you get here. How's that sound?"

"Great!" Sandra replied, taking down the notes and handing the paper to her anxious friend.

* * *

It was only ten blocks away from Sandra's studio and Amy felt her heart racing faster with each passing driveway as they neared the address. When she saw the old blue truck sitting in front of a small craftsman house she had never noticed before with a 'for sale' sign in the window, a lump came up in her throat to think that someone else could have driven off in the only vehicle that would ever know all of the secrets it could tell, if only it could talk.

Ty opened the front door of the house and bounded down the steps, looking less than hopeful for a sale, she thought.

As he neared the edge of the yard he suddenly pulled up and stared in disbelief at the driver when he recognized her, and then noticed the passenger who rode with her. "Amy? What are you doing here? You aren't the one who called…," he stumbled his way through figuring out what was happening.

The very nervous young woman opened her door to step out to the sidewalk. "Hey, Ty…, and no, it wasn't me who called, it was Sandra. I asked her to do it for me because you aren't picking up my calls anymore. I need to know if you will talk to me? Please, Ty, don't send me away without hearing me out first!" her heart was sinking at the look that drew his face into a doubtful, mistrusting frown. Maybe it was already too late.

He fielded the unexpected request and let it tumble around inside his head while he processed what his response should be, and then he offered, "There is a nice park just around the corner. We can take a walk if you like. C'mon, this way," he held out his hand to direct her.

Sandra nodded when Amy slowly turned to look at her, seeking some kind of confirmation that she was doing the right thing, and opened the door to her truck and started it up. "I'll be back at the studio, if you need me," she said through the passenger window, giving a wink and a reassuring smile for encouragement.

Amy's heart skipped a couple of beats before racing to catch up, and then she reached out slowly to his hand and took it, making sure he saw the look in her eyes, knowing that many of the answers he was looking for would be put to rest as soon as he saw the misty blue longing in them.

They walked in quiet anticipation at first. It wasn't until they reached a bench away from anyone walking nearby that he motioned for her to sit, Amy still not surrendering the firm grip on his hand. "Ty, I am so sorry that things got so far out of hand. It breaks my heart to think that you could ever believe for an instant that you are not the most important person in my life. I know we were at odds over the ranch we wanted to buy, and over Charger, and the secrets we were each keeping, and I have realized how big of a mistake it was to be so careless…, with us," she confessed openly, never leaving his intent gaze. "There is no one else, or no other place that I would ever want to be…, without you!"

Amy unconsciously held her breath while the seconds drug by without a response. She was just about to go even farther to convince him when he finally spoke, "Amy, I hope you know, all that ever mattered to me was that you were happy. I thought for a while that I had finally managed to be the person who could do that for you, but when Ahmed came along and started offering all of those possibilities to you, the fancy horses and elaborate stables in exotic, faraway places, and the _big money_ …, I knew I couldn't compete with any of those things, and when you accepted, I began to believe those things were what you really wanted and that I was going to lose you, after all. Soooo, I just had to prepare myself for whatever you decided to do. Then, after the rumors started of a "Royal romance," and the video after that, what was I supposed to think? It isn't like you wanted to fight for us anymore, so I decided that I had to move on, because I can't be here, not without you. I can't find anywhere here in Hudson that doesn't make me think of you, and the truck, well, every square inch of it reminds me of you, and it's just too much!" he said, breaking his gaze and looking at the grassy place around his feet.

Broken and near panic, Amy reached with her fingertips to draw his jaw around to make sure he was looking at her, more forcefully this time, "Don't you dare give up on us! I know we both behaved like complete jackasses to each other, all because of some silly pride more than anything else. You and I have known each other for a long time, and sometimes we forget how much is ahead for us, not what has already been. We have had our ups and downs, but I know in my heart that you are the only one who will ever love me like I know you still do, and I also know how I feel about you! I will never love anyone like I love you, Ty! I think you are afraid to admit that you can be loved like that, by anyone, but I am sitting here telling you, right now, that you are the only one I have any intention of spending the rest of my life with. I need _you_ to love me, and I am not willing to let you leave here without you knowing that!"

"You had to pretend to want to buy my old pickup truck to come and tell me that?" he wondered.

"I am dead serious about buying it! No one else is going to drive away with half of my life riding along with them. Most of the best memories I have had something to do with that truck!" she explained with tears flowing freely down her cheeks. "I got my first taste of freedom, riding in that truck…, at least beyond Grandpa's ranch and what I had with the horses there. I learned to drive in that truck! How many girls do you know that can handle a clutch like you taught me to do?" she smiled, and then softened. "I learned to love while riding with you in that truck, and, later on, I became a woman…, in that truck," a flickering memory crossing his eyes as she caught him off guard with her surprising candor. "Even if you are willing to let it go, I'm not, so I am going home with that truck today, one way or the other! I was hoping I could convince you to come home, where you belong, and keep it running for me. I wouldn't let just anyone touch my truck, you know!"

"Are you sure, Amy? Are you sure that what you would be giving up won't make you regret this decision someday, to stay here in this small town and become the wife of a small town veterinarian, because that is all I can promise you?"

"It's much more than that, Ty! I feel like I am supposed to work with horses, you know how much I love that, and the high performance horses were fun to train, but there is _nothing_ I have ever felt that makes me happier than knowing I have the person that I love the most here with me, working with horses who actually need somebody like us to look after them, _together_! No quarter million dollar horse, or award from winning a competition with them, or flying off to some beautiful place means anything to me, if it isn't with _you_! I have missed you more than I know how to tell you! So, I guess it's up to you, this time. You always leave our relationship up to me, like I am the only one who has a say as to whether you and I are together or not. It doesn't work that way, Ty! We both make those decisions, together! Aaannnd, I vote yes…, that we stop acting like a couple of knuckleheads and we make this work, like we mean it…, forever!"

Time stood still for Amy. Every earnest feeling she had to offer had been given, this time without anything being withheld or unsaid, and she knew her future was going to fall on one side of her dreams, or the other, with Ty's answer.

"Amy…, I am sorry that I didn't have the strength or confidence in myself, or in us, to keep my worrying and wild ideas from getting the better of me. I let them dictate what my mind saw as facts when I should have talked to you more, not less! I am just so used to having everything I value in life taken away from me, like I am destined to be punished for being who I am…, just some kid who was a mistake from the beginning, someone who doesn't have a right to expect to be happy. I don't want to be the crazy husband who drives his wife away because he is too afraid of losing her!" he admitted, bowing his head as if defeat was weighing him down.

Amy leaned into the guy who was the rebel she had met as a fifteen year old girl, scared and bitter from her own tragedies, and gently stroked the side of his face with the back of her fingertips. She always knew he had an unfounded idea that he was somehow undeserving of good things when they came his way, but she melted in compassion at grasping how deeply those feelings haunted him, and then knew what she was sent here by the forces that guided them to say, "You have no idea how much of a difference you made to me, and to my entire family, when we needed someone like you to come along, do you? Ty, you were hurt and scared, but you always managed to amaze us with the way you put us first when we needed help or encouragement. It didn't take very long for all of us to figure out that you were nothing like we expected you to be, the ungrateful delinquent, the troublemaker who could not be trusted without close supervision. Ty, the goodness in your heart kept showing through, especially when things got tough, and we all saw it, and we all accepted you into our family because of who you really are, and every last one of us loves you. Especially the cowgirl who used to look out her window to the loft and wish she could be up there with you, and make you want to marry her someday!"

As Ty lifted his gaze to search the face that had become his source of inspiration, Amy saw the love in the green eyes she had used so often as her own anchor.

"Well then, I guess we are going to have to spend a lot more time showing each other how to give up the part of ourselves that we have been holding back from each other. That's what people who love each enough to commit to a life together do, right?" he reasoned.

"Yes, that is exactly what they do!" she answered, her spirit soaring toward the first glimmer of hope she had been looking for.

"What do you think about a test drive, before you write a check for that old truck?" Ty asked.

"I don't need a test drive!" she said with conviction. "I already know everything I need to know, except, where are the keys?" the rejuvenated woman asked, "Because I'm taking both of you home with me, right now, where you belong!"

The End


End file.
